Turn, Turn, Turn

Hey.  How have you been?  I know, I know, it’s been too long, we’ve managed to let life get in the way again and let the important things slide.  We keep doing that, taking the other for granted when things become hurried and frantic and you can’t tell up from down or night from day – hell, who are we kidding, it can happen even if it’s a perfectly quiet Sunday morning on the deck listening to the birds and enjoying that first cup of coffee watching the sun wake up the sky.  We’re lazy and we know it.  The things that keep us grounded the most are the ones we allow to shift out of focus on a regular basis until such time as we stop long enough to notice what’s missing.

It’s still warm, too warm for us up here, and I know you have it worse, but we were never meant to live with the AC running 24/7 – that’s not healthy and I don’t know how you do it.  I need my window open at night to sleep in that deep, restful sleep that has been eluding me for far too long now, and a closed up stale house just isn’t cutting it.

Yes, I know we’ve only got a few more months of this and then it’s back to the dark chill, and you know I’m perfectly fine with that.  I’ve never once said I didn’t like that.  Yes I know I complain about it once it’s here and caught us in it’s icy grasp, but deep down I still love it, and would dearly miss it if this wasn’t where we called home.

There’s comfort in those changes, a rhythm, a cadence that marks time perfectly, measuring the months while we pretend not to notice, eyes diverted while the grass grows and darkens, slows and browns, cools then stops.  It’s an assurance that things are fine the way they are, without your intervention, that nature has it all figured out and if you’d only quit trying to fool yourself, you’d see you need only to fall into step and allow it to be just the way it is.

But we’ve never really been good at that have we?

We’re fortunate to live in a time where (for most of us) opportunity and choice are almost endless, we’re god-like in every respect and ancient royalty by any measure of historical context, but we’re caught in a shift of ideology that has us anxious and fearful of losing everything we have.  Sounds like the same issues historical royalty faced too, but ours is ingrained into our being now even the poorest among us expect things to be a certain way, the threshold higher than at any time before, the dream just beyond our grasp. 

Few though recognize the reality, which is not new, only magnified by the unlimited amount of information we have at our disposal through which to shift to find it.  It was easier to remain ignorant when information was more tightly controlled by the ruling classes of Church and State, easier too to be led and controlled, and don’t think that lesson has been lost on those who seek to gain at the expense of others.  Dumb it down and keep them numb and the world is your oyster.

We have only ourselves to blame – seeking refuge from our daily stresses in mindless fluff and pointless pastimes, allowing others to carry the load and do the heavy lifting, preferring to sit and rest a spell, thinking we’ll catch up and help out when we’re ready.  But if we can’t even make time for the ones closest to us, the ones who mean the most, what makes us think we’ll make any time for issues that might not concern us presently but will surely impact us later?  We’ve been conditioned to live in the here and now, and that’s exactly where we’ll be damned.

But how do you balance the here and now acceptance of allowing things to be the way they are naturally with attempting to provide guidance and leadership for a future course through unknown waters?  The two seem directly opposed. Perhaps within each is the solution to the other – a measured allowance of latitude within the wheel to wander across the waves while we occasionally scan the horizon for perils and obstacles?  Except that it was far easier to spot the hazards when you were alone at sea as opposed to traversing the woodlands at high speed where both the forest and trees look identical.

Perhaps that’s where the change of season comes in, clearing the forest of the leafy cover come fall, allowing more light to filter through until we’re uncovered and bare, able to see great distances now in the cooler air, poised to take advantage of the clarity.  And with calculated decisions made, we continue on back into spring, where the green returns and multiplies soon to provide us with much needed shade to hide us from the midsummer’s sun.  We slow our pace somewhat in the heat but soldier on, the rich bounty of the coming harvest steering us forward, waiting to replenish our bodies and souls.

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose…

Words to ponder this morning before that dark, oppressive heat settles in for another day.  And maybe our routine of finding and losing each other again is just the way it is meant to be. 

Maybe, but I’d prefer to keep the losing part to a minimum.